The Berlin Document Center

Guardhouse at Entrance to the BDC Compound

As I noted several blogs ago, I will lead a Museum mission to Germany and Poland this summer. In fact I leave for Berlin tomorrow. In preparing for the trip, I was going through some papers at home and found the photographs that I am including in this posting. I was the last director of the Berlin Document Center (BDC), which was one of the most interesting institutions created in the postwar period. The BDC was the collecting point for tens of millions of captured and seized records of the Nazi party and its affiliated organizations. Early on it was a key resource for the Nuremberg trials and the denazification program.


Underground Bunker which Served as Document Storage

Later (and in my time), it became an important scholarly archive. Throughout the postwar period, it was a sensitive and complicated institution. I have arranged a special visit to the current home of the BDC for my group this summer. I will report on that visit in a week or so. In the meantime, I hope you find these vintage photographs of interest. I got them from the late Kurt Rosenow, who was the first civilian BDC Director, after it had been transfered to the State Department from the US Army in 1953. Kurt had been with the BDC from the very start and these photos show it during the very early period, when it was run by the Army.


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